Adrian Michaels is Group Foreign Editor at the Telegraph Media Group. You can write to adrian.michaels@telegraph.co.uk and follow @adrianmichaels on Twitter.

Who does Dick Cheney think he is?

Barack Obama has made plenty of errors since taking office in January. Worse, some of the campaign promises or themes have been cast aside like so much confetti as soon as they have seemed inconvenient. I blogged earlier in this vein about the new ambassador to London.

But I will say this: Barack Obama won the presidential election, and the Democrats made significant gains on Capitol Hill. After an election, the winners have earned the right to govern. The losers are of course allowed to criticise and formulate alternative plans.

Not all losers however. George W Bush, the previous incumbent of the White House, knows that convention, politeness and ethics dictate that he keep quiet no matter what he thinks of Obama's policies.

What of the previous vice-president? Dick Cheney has never been bound by convention. As vice-president he extended the reach of his office beyond its traditional constraints, and he argued consistently for covert action, for secrecy, for the extension of the executive branch.

Now he has decided to brief openly against the White House. While the president was giving a speech defending his security policies – and I think he really has messed up on Guantanamo – Mr Cheney was giving a speech attacking the new White House.

"When he faults or mis-characterizes the national security decisions we made in the Bush years, he deserves an answer," said Mr Cheney. That's not true. He does not "deserve" anything from the people he succeeded in office. They should keep quiet.

How is this different from Al Gore raging about the environment? Not very. Mr Gore made films about the danger to the planet from inaction over the environment, implicitly contradicting the Bush White House's policies. I think that's pretty bad behaviour too. But somehow Mr Cheney's seems worse. He is undermining a new president who is popular and has just earned his mandate; he is openly attacking decisions line-by-line and regularly. It looks and smells like a case of very bad eggs. It's inappropriate.